Tools for stainless steel fretwire

[Bob Steinarsson]

A guy came in with two guitars, both fretted with gray stainless steel frets (supposed to be the toughest ones). The fretting is not the best, and the frets are quite uneven. According to the owner, the fret ends are glued with super glue, probably Stewmacs thin. I am afraid of hammering the high frets down. They will probably not go further down, due to the glue, and worst case is that they get loose, and I stay with a job that I don't want. The safest solution for me will probably be to file the frets even and dress them. Can somebody with stainless experience please tell me which tools I will need to dress stainless steel frets? I have thought about my Stewmac diamond fret file, but I'm afraid that it will wear out before the frets get rounded.  

[Frank Ford]

For what it's worth, I use exactly the same tools for stainless that I use for nickel frets. Files have a somewhat shorter life, but that's about it. Diamond would be pretty much unaffected by stainless. Remember, diamond abrasives are used for sharpening hardened steel knives and chisels, and those are far harder than stainless frets.

[Jeffrey L. Suits]

Are you sure you want to take on this job? Sounds like you're going to be polishing someone else's turd.

[Bob Steinarsson]

You are right, but somebody must do it (they are both Gibson 335) and the someone else is not trusted anymore. According to Frank's answer the job doesn't seem impossible, though.
Thanks!

[Rory]

I concur, regular 'ol tools work fine. Done quite a few ss frets & tools still doing the job-just using the regular stew mac files and a flat aluminum bar with sandpaper on it for initial levelling. From reading Ive been doing on the net, I feel a lot of luthiers are making way too big a deal of working with ss. Sorry to hear you have a bit of a mess to deal with though...there is definitely less fudging room with ss fret radius and if it aint right, you get them popping up-like you described.

Rory

[thefishinmusician]

I do quite a few stainless jobs...Not as horrible as some folks think...I do use Stew-Mac jaws and superglue...If the customer is willing, it might be a good idea to pull the worst frets, clean them and re-seat them using Jaws.....It is a great tool, and has paid for itself many times over...Diamond fret crowning is the way to go...Good luck

[nathan clark]

This is just my take, but I would probably do a re-refret or walk away. A "partial refret", especially of that sort could easily take me just as long as simply redoing the job.

1) With all the frets gone you could use the dremel and router base to quickly and accurately follow up the little binding friendlyl-fret slot saw to clean out the fret slots.

2) It would be easier to get rid of those c.a. plateaus left under the crown because there won't be any adjacent frets in the way as you resurface the fretboard. Plus I like the crisper fretboard corners you get after resurfacing, easier to work with as you dial in those fret ends.

3) You could do your own thing with the fret ends, not try to blend your work into the existing (over?) bevel.

4) Most importantly for you, there won't be any misunderstanding of who did what with the frets because of a convoluted repair history that you're tied to. All of the work the customer is unhappy with will be gone and replaced by yours.

On another note, I've actually gotten to the point where I prefer to work with stainless steel because of its hardness. I like the fact that the new dead-blow fretting mallet won't mar the stainless crown. In the end, I've found that it's less of a hassle to get the look I'm going for on a given type of instrument, especially on a finished maple fretboard that you're not going to refinish or overspray.

You'll need to get rid of the tang-nub left by the nippers though. Otherwise, your fret ends won't seat right over the binding and look kind of goofy. Frank sells, or developed anyway, a tool for that. I use a dremel and shop-made jig for this.

However you go about it, have fun.

[Ron Frazier]

Stainless is not that hard. It doesn't bore good or cut easy. I would use all the old things you use every day on it. The diamond files form Harbor freight I use for a lot of the frets.

Ron

[Rob Mercure]

As noted by others stainless has a reputation for hardness that isn't always justified. There are many series of stainless and semi-stainless steels and some are really quite soft. Having never used nor researched SS for fretwire I don't know much about it but you could probably get the metal series and designation from Stew-Mac and some others just to give yourself some idea as to how hard the common ones are. While the "secret" of how to make it has been lost there were some bronze age swords that would slice what we now call cold rolled steel so just 'cuz it's stainless steel doesn't mean it's ready to make a nosecone from.

Rob

[Bob Steinarsson]

One of the guitars is ready for delivery. As said in the thread, there is no problem to file and dress ss. I needed, however three to four times as much paper as normal to level the frets. The diamond file took hand of the rounding. Longer time, but no problem. The polishing was done with 0000 steel wool and Micro Mesh 3600, 6000 and 12000, and the frets are now shiny enough to count your nose hairs in them.

Thanks everybody!

Bob S